Short Fiction Collections

Uncle Brick And The Four Novelettes

What do you get when you combine a failed accountant from L.A. with an eighty-year-old Boston PI?

You get “Uncle Brick and the Four Novelettes,” the irreverent mystery series featuring wise-cracking Brick Callahan and his forty-two-year-old nephew, recently divorced and back in Boston after a decade on the west coast.

The first story, “Uncle Brick and Jimmy Kills,” was named a finalist by the Short Mystery Fiction Society for a 2010 Derringer award. In it, the unnamed narrator returns to Boston intent on teaming up with his uncle to solve the mystery of his father’s murder. Along the way, they encounter a crooked accountant, a ruthless mob boss, and a beautiful, grieving widow.

In Story Two, “Uncle Brick and the Little Devilz,” the Callahans investigate the supposed suicide of a newly retired realtor in an investigation that takes them through a strip club employing underage dancers, by way of a homicidal bouncer.

Story Three is titled “Uncle Brick and the L.A. Ex.” In this adventure, the team flies out to Los Angeles to investigate the disappearance of the new boyfriend of our unnamed narrator’s ex-wife. The trail runs through LAX, Hollywood Park and Westwood, with an ending you’ll never see coming.

In the fourth story of the series, “Uncle Brick and the Boulevard of Broken Bones,” a night out at a local steakhouse leads to a horrifying car wreck, a cryptic message from a passerby, and a mystery straight out of an old Callahan Investigations case.

Letters from the Asylum

These three horror/dark thriller novellas were released individually in 2011 and 2012, and are offered together in one volume for the first time. Darkness Falls and Heartless were published originally by Delirium Books and are now out of print and available only in this collection.

Darkness FallsNovelist Tyler Beckman was once a New York Times bestselling author and considered the heir to Stephen King. Now he’s destroyed his marriage and squandered his money and is floundering, unable to write a single word of new material.

Desperate to reclaim all he has lost, Tyler becomes convinced the only way to break through his writer’s block is by returning to his old hometown of Darkness Falls, New Hampshire. The tiny village is the scene of an unimaginable tragedy from his past and a place he never thought he would set foot in again.

Almost immediately upon his return, Tyler begins writing, outstanding material, work that will soon propel him back to the top of the bestseller lists.

But everything comes with a price tag, and in the town of Darkness Falls, that price might be more than anyone can bear…

Heartless
Gary Newton is a drifter. He travels from town to town seeking out young women to terrorize, selecting a victim, charming her into trusting him, and then acting out his brutal fantasies.

He does this over and over.

But when he chooses two college students at a small-town ice cream stand as his latest victims, Gary Newton discovers he may finally have bitten off more than he can chew.

Because Janelle and Audrey are not your typical college coeds. They have secrets of their own. Secrets Gary Newton cannot imagine even in his darkest fantasies…

The Becoming
When twelve-year-old Tim McKenna learns of the legend of a horrific mining disaster in his new home town of Tonopah, Pennsylvania, he decides to skip school one day and explore the long-abandoned mine.

He goes alone.

When he disappears, his frantic mother marshals an all-out search for her missing son, a search law enforcement is only too happy to call off when the boy returns home alive and apparently none the worse for wear.

But Tim won’t talk about what happened to him deep beneath the earth in the Tonopah Mine. He won’ talk about much of anything, in fact.

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